Thank goodness for vacations and time off. It's just a wonderful feeling to awaken and realize that we don't have to "go to work" or do much of anything. Roll over in the sack and gaze out the window at the cloudy mountains in the distance...
Not only were the clouds outside thick and encroaching, but the rest of our trip now lay under a veritable cloud. The wife of our friend (let's call them Mr. & Ms. D) with the ranch out here had taken sick on the drive out, and when we last spoke last night on the phone, it didn't look good.
We thought we might have to change gears and find another place to sleep for Thursday and Friday nights. We figured we could easily find a place in Alpine, only a couple of hours north. Or Marfa was always a possibility.
Or, hey, maybe we could get two more nights here in the mountains and really take our time to explore the area. We could make that trip down to Santa Elena Canyon we'd figured we didn't have the time for this time around.
Or take a couple of the longer hikes that start right here in the Chisos Basin. We had options.
We tried to put ourselves in the shoes of our friends. If we had a ranch out west, and some friends had traveled 800 miles to see us, and if my wife had gotten sick on the way out, what would we tell our friends? We'd still want them to come out and see our place, but we sure wouldn't want to infect them with the flu, or something else. It would be up to them, but at the same time, we probably would not feel like entertaining friends at all under the circumstances. Rats. Shit.
We had agreed to call them up this morning, just to see how she was feeling, but, hey, first things first, so the wife and I went and had the breakfast buffet at the Restaurant. According to the weather forecast, Hurricane Rick was losing its punch over the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains, and sure enough, by the time we'd finished breakfast, we could see some streaks of blue sky between the clouds. Maybe the weather would turn out OK after all.
Before calling our friends, I went to the Registration Desk and explained our situation. As I expected, there was no room at the inn. No openings at any of the Lodges in the Basin. Booked up tight. If we needed to find a place to stay, it wouldn't be here in the Chisos.
Oh well, there were plenty of spaces in Alpine, and besides, that's a convenient location for us, because Alpine is where we board the eastbound Amtrak train on Saturday. We wandered around the Gift Shop again for a few minutes, and the woman behind the counter at the Registration Desk finds me to tell me that, well, in fact, there WAS going to be one room open at the Emory Peak Lodge for two nights, just what we needed, and it was only $5 more per night than what we had been paying at the Casa Grande.
The Emory Peak Lodges are the highest up on Emory Peak, still not far from the Casa Grande Lodge or the Restaurant, but with the best views of all the lodgings here. This could be quite a lucky stroke. I told her that I wanted to call my friends first before paying for two extra nights, just in case, so we walked to a pay phone and rang them up.
As luck would have it, Mr. D said Ms. D was feeling much better this morning, and she certainly did not have the flu. When you get the flu, you know it pretty quickly. The flu typically comes onto you like a freight train (a freight train that is moving, that is, considering how many stalled freight trains we saw on the train trip out west).
He figured that they had maybe given her a too-strong dose of Diatomaceous Earth, which is quite an interesting substance, but while she wasn't feeling perfect, she was much better this morning. I asked him to be honest and give it to me straight, because it was not that big of a problem for us to find another spot for the last two nights. He insisted that would not be necessary. Well, OK, good news all around.
We agreed to meet at the "Study Butte Mall" around noon. So after packing up, we checked out, thanking them but no thanking them for the offer of a room at the Emory Peak Lodge.
We had no trouble finding the Study Butte Mall on the way out of the National Park. It's the first "sign of life" after leaving the Park, and the only stoplight in Terlingua, although it's not really in the road.
There are at least three businesses at the "Mall," but the Study Butte Store is where everything seems to happen and everyone seems to go.
Things are a little different out here in the West. We hung out out front waiting for our friends and saw half the town show up for supplies or one kind or another (lots of beer). The pic below is "out back" of the Study Butte Store, where the "restroom" is.
"Bob" kept us company while we waited for our friends. Everybody in town greeted Bob, and us. 
Soon enough, our friends show up, both wearing hats and long pants. They had adapted to desert living. The first order of business with our friends was, naturally, lunch.
They introduced us to an odd, Mad Max kind of place just down the road from the "Mall" - Kathy's Kosmic Kowgirl Kafe.
The place may look awful funky, but they served up a perfectly tasty 1/2 lb hamburger, and it hit the spot. 
We also hit the Terlingua Trading Company before driving west. They have a little bit of everything in that store, including a pretty good bookstore.
We also stopped at the Lajitas Resort and Spa just to poke around a bit.
We spoke with a guy (salesman?) briefly and he tells us that, because of the flood on the Rio Grande a few years ago, they had to raise the golf course about 25'. Can you imagine? Raising a golf course 25 feet!? #1, there shouldn't even be a golf course in this dry country, and #2, oh, never mind.
Mr. D wanted to take us on a drive along the "River Road" for a bit before heading to their place. This is one incredible road. It roughly follows the Rio Grande River from Lajitas west to Presidio, about 50 miles total. Some awesome scenery.
Steep climbs, fast drops, winding along the river...and nothing out here. No towns, no trailers, maybe a ruin or two here and there, which we stopped to briefly explore. People LIVED here??
Also stopped to take a short walk among some canyons, very close to the Rio Grande.
Watch out for contrabandistas! 
It's like being in an old Western movie out here. In fact, there is an old movie set from LONE STAR along the Rio here. I don't think I saw that flick.
The Rio Grande is indeed very narrow and shallow in some spots here.
You might think it would be easy to sneak across the border to or from Mexico, but the towering Sierra Madre Oriental mountains on the Mexico side are quite an impediment to foot travel. Here is a hi-res pic of the area.
Since 9/11 they have closed all of the "informal" border crossings, leaving only four or five "International Bridges" between the two countries in Texas. The land down here is rough and barren, until you get very close to the Rio Grande, where green patches are scattered here and there.
We must have driven 30 of the 50 miles of this road before turning around and coming back to Terlingua.
Once back to Terlingua, we picked up our rent car that we'd left at the "Mall," and made a beeline to the Bee Mountain Hardware Store. Every town needs a good hardware store, and this one looked up to the task.
Now it was time to head out to their ranch. We'd spent so much time on the River Road and such that it would probably be dark before reaching the ranch. Fortunately, Mr. D would be the one driving. If I am going to a place that I've never been before, I try to arrive during daylight hours. Just much easier to deal with that way. Here, it was going to be dark, on a dirty, dusty, rocky road with unknown forks veering off here and there, AND there were most certainly going to be some sort of wild animals out there in the brush, whether they be javelinas, foxes, snakes, scorpions, or a mountain lion or two.
We dropped off our rental car at one their friends places before piling into their 4WD for the final hour of the trip. Their ranch is about 10 miles from where we left the car, and it was going to take an hour to get there from here. THIS is what Alpine Auto Rental meant by "off-roading." Yikes!
I'm not going to give many details about where we went, to respect my friends privacy. They don't want to be ... too accessible when they're out here. Let's just say that it is extremely unlikely that they will get a knock on their door from some kind of salesman, or Jehovah's Witness. Ain't gonna happen.
Their place is somewhere on this map. Close enough.
We didn't get to their place until after dark, as Mr. D had predicted. We couldn't see the house very well, but we sure could see the stars. Ms. D made a nice late dinner and we turned in fairly early. We slept upstairs in the loft, with a cool breeze softly blowing between the two open windows on opposites ends of the house. Very pleasant and comfortable.
Friday was our one full day here at their ranch. Mr. D. had scheduled some workers for the same day we would be here; you need to take advantage of workers when you can get them out here. There is not exactly a Yellow Pages brimming with service industries in these parts. You take what you can get, when you can get them.
While one man was working out back, Mr. D. had to make a trip to town for some newly-delivered supplies. Apparently the seller would deliver them only to the cut-off on the highway. The round-trip would take about three hours total.
I thought about accompanying Mr. D on the long errand, but he reminded me that we were on vacation, and I should relax and take it easy, and not go on a long, slow, bumpy, dusty ride to the highway and back, so I took his advice and stayed put.
After a simple breakfast of yogurt and fruit (always gotta work food in there), Ms. D and the wife took a ride in their "buggy," another 4WD, jeep-type vehicle built for super-rough terrain. Road Warrior here we come.
I decided to let the two girls go and have a good time and not get in their way, so I stayed behind at the house as they crawled away in the distance in the buggy. About ten minutes later, as I sat in a comfy Cabela's recliner on the porch under the patio cover, I heard some whistles in the distance and sure enough, there they were, perched on a ridge about half a mile away, whistling and waving their arms at me. My wife has a whistle that can drown out a train whistle.
The quiet out here is total and wonderful. No jet planes overhead. No large trucks grinding gears and struggling along the highway. No buses, no screeching tires, no noisy helicopters spying on us from above. It's a delicious quiet.
I kicked back in the recliner, with the breeze lightly caressing my face and dozed. Ahhh, vacation....
Around noon, the girls had returned from their trek, just in time for lunch. After a quick bite, since Mr. D. was still not back from his errand, the three of us took a short hike around the area.
You'd better be prepared for the desert. There are so many spiky, sharp plants in the desert, you have to be very careful where you walk and what you do. The desert can hurt you in a thousand different ways. It is one tough environment out here. The closer you look at the ground, the more you see. There is just an amazing variety of color and life in the desert. Much more than you might imagine.
I spotted these cactus flowers (below) blooming all over. They call this one a "rock flower" because it seems to be coming right out of the ground, out of the rock, but it's actually a cactus.
After we got back to the house, I spotted Mr. D and a second truck slowly approaching in the distance. Mr. D. was pulling a new water cistern on a trailer behind his truck, and the other truck was pulling two.
When you add in the propane tanks and the solar panels on the roof, they are effectively "off the grid." Hell, they'll need all of it when society breaks down and we're at each others throats in the city. Next year.
Maneuvering the three new cisterns was a bit of a trick. Rather than just lay around while everyone else was working, I pitched in to help. Can't take advantage of their hospitality without helping out with SOME chores. We offloaded the cisterns from their trailers about 100' away from their eventual resting place, and each would be rolled on its side down a small hill into position.
Fortunately, empty, they were not that heavy. Bulky, but not that heavy. All went very well until the third cistern. Somehow, I got almost pinned between the rolling cistern and a metal girder. The valve of the cistern spun around and whacked me on my left arm. It was just a little scrape, or so I thought, and continued to help maneuver it into its resting place.
Once in place, I glanced at my arm again and almost fainted: I had a small cut where the valve had hit me, and there was a little blood, but just behind it was a MASSIVE knot that had swelled up about as big as a golf ball. This was not good.
I scampered up to the house, nervously looking at this large and growing bulge on my arm. This was a really nasty contusion. Ms. D. took one look at me and sprung into action. She gathered a bunch of ice in a plastic bag and had me sit and hold the ice over the knot. It was cold as hell, but it made it feel better.
After a couple of minutes, she produced some Arnica montana pellets and gel. She instructed me to take four pellets and let them dissolve under my tongue, while she applied some gel to the wound. I credit her with top-notch medical aid. The massive swelling began to recede and the bleeding had stopped.
I should have taken a picture of my arm but I wasn't thinking that clearly. I could have been on the edge of shock. Besides, my camera battery was low and I'd left my re-charger with the rental car, an hour away. I sat quietly with the ice freezing my arm and she gave me a second set of pellets to dissolve under my tongue. Her quick action averted what could have been a pretty ugly situation. She could have even saved my life. Ain't it great to have friends! Especially friends who KNOW things!
Within a couple of hours, it was a little hard to tell where the lump was.
We spent a second pleasantly peaceful night out at the ranch Friday night.
Another great dinner + some adult beverages. It was a great way to end our trip, but then we had to leave Saturday morning to get back to Alpine in time for our eastbound train.
We were not looking forward to the return train trip. As expected, the train ride from Alpine was smooth and uneventful until we got closer to Houston, where it got bumpy and violent again. We are unlikely to take this same train ride again, at least not until we can be convinced that new tracks are being used, and the ride is decent again, but that is not likely to happen anytime soon.
Oh, there was one rather chilling event on the train ride home. At about 6pm or so, we crossed the Pecos River High Bridge. A voice came over the P.A. system saying that this bridge is the highest TRAIN bridge in the United States. OMG it was high.
I guess we must have crossed this same bridge on the westbound trip, but they made no announcement about it, unless maybe we crossed it while we were napping, trying to recover some sleep from the harrowing trip from Houston.
The train engineer seemed to slow down as we approached the bridge, and when we got out in the middle of it, he slowed down a lot more. It was QUITE an unsettling feeling being that high up, seeing that far down, and knowing that we don't really take great care of our train tracks. And bridges?!? I think my blood pressure must have spiked waaaay up there on that bridge. Yikes!
Here's a video that I found on the web.
We hit Houston about 5:30am on Sunday morning and, half-asleep, hailed a cab ride home.
It sure is nice to get away on vacation, but it's also quite nice to get home after a long time away. This was a really great trip, but next time, we won't pack quite so many destinations in so little time. If you haven't taken some time off lately, do it. You have to get outside of yourself now and then and re-connect with nature. We have some glorious National Parks in this beautiful country of ours. Make use of them!
As you were!
To read Day 1 - Amtrak, click here.
To read Day 2 - Observatory, click here.
To read Day 3 & 4 - Marfa, TX, click here.
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